Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
michael_hogan is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sharp_ribbed_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
em_poker_privacy is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
holiday_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
concert_t_shirt is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michelle_obama and vice_president_biden are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
ktla is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
belair_road is a street in the city augusta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1978_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
expensive_suit is a clothing item to go with hat	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8